Day 10:

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Connecting the dots: constellations in the skies of old.

My aunt died two days ago and while we were not super close, I feel her loss so profoundly. I have experienced so much death in my almost 30 years and it never gets easier. I got to the hospital just as they were taking her away and I wish I had arrived a few minutes later. I wish I never had to see them unwrap her like a mummy so I could say goodbye. She was cocooned and buckled in and all I could do was shake. Because even though I have been to too many funerals to count, I had never been around someone who just took their last breath. All I could think about was my dad in that moment and how the last time I saw him he was basically a vegetable in the bed. I begged him to move on so that he and everyone else would no longer be suffering. At that moment, all I could think about was how is just dust in a tomb somewhere. The thought of someone just leaving this universe as if they were never even here is so unfathomable to me.

Death scares me so profoundly and sometimes I feel like it is looming over me. That at any moment my life will be taken from me and I will be just a memory for everyone around me.

In the garden and Summer, 1890s

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

aura

What are your self-sabotaging habits?

After MUCH self-reflection, I have realized that I have several things that I do that have led to me sabotaging myself. I doubt myself at every turn, I compare myself to other, and I never follow through for many things.

And if that isn't the holy trinity of a sure way to fail, I don't know what is.

For some reason, every time I start to think of the future or even think of starting a relationship with someone, doubt is the first thing that creeps into my mind. There's a really good job that I want to transition to? NOPE, they would never hire me. You really want to be in a relationship with that guy you really like? NOPE, he is only using you and wants someone skinnier. I don't know why my brain is set up to automatically put me down but that is something I am unlearning. As soon as any inkling of self-doubt starts creeping in I try to nip it in the bud. Because the first thing you learn when manifesting is that there should be no doubt, whatever I want is already mine. Why wouldn't I be able to start a new job? They would be lucky to have someone with so many transferable skills. Why wouldn't a man I am talking to want to get in a relationship? They would be lucky to have someone like me with so much love to give.

Something else I have had to unlearn is to stop comparing myself to others. I was busy trying to survive and I'm finally at a place where I know I can do so much more with my life. I love my friends and family and want nothing but the best for them but I find myself wishing I was at the same place in life they're currently at. Or even seeing someone on the street and wishing I looked like them. Comparison is the root of all my evils and I'm trying my best to celebrate myself everyday instead of trying to fix myself. I have many flaws but I am perfect the way I am. I would not change anything about me because it made me the person I am today. I am so much more compassionate, loving, and understanding because of the live I have been dealt and I am better for it.

Finally, another habit I am trying to break is building positive habits and actually sticking to them. Like eating healthier, keeping my spaces clean, keeping up with schoolwork, or even working out consistently. These are all things I have struggled with in the past but I am determined to be different this year. I am only 31 and I have so much life left and I don't want to spend it wondering "what if?" I had just stuck to my goals. Because "what if it all works out?"

The Kelpie by Herbert James Draper (1913)

I have spent my whole life swimming

Fighting the currents

Trying to reach the shore

But I am tired

Of giving it my all

Only for the waves to pull me back

So instead I float

To avoid drowning

I can see the shore

I can make it

If the waves don't engulf me first.